Ash as Salt of Wisdom

The residue of calcinatio — the cinis, the ash — is not waste but the sal sapientiae, the salt of wisdom. Edinger makes the equivalence explicit: “What turns the ashes of failure into the crown of victory is indicated by the fact that ash is alchemically equivalent to salt. The symbolism of salt has been discussed comprehensively by Jung. Basically salt symbolizes Eros and appears in one of two aspects, either as bitterness or as wisdom” (Edinger 1985).

Jung’s text is load-bearing: “Tears, sorrow, and disappointment are bitter, but wisdom is the comforter in all psychic suffering. Indeed, bitterness and wisdom form a pair of alternatives: where there is bitterness wisdom is lacking, and where wisdom is there can be no bitterness. Salt, as the carrier of this fateful alternative, is coordinated with the nature of woman” (Jung, quoted Edinger 1985). The calcinatio that ends in ash is therefore an Eros-operation in disguise: what the fire purges from desirousness crystallizes as the salt of sapiential bitterness transmuted into knowing.

The doctrine binds calcinatio to the entire Wisdom tradition of the West. The sal sapientiae is the philosophical residue of the soul’s passage through affliction — Paul’s “tribulation worketh patience” at Jung‘s alchemical register, Sophia’s seat in the ash-heap at Job’s side. What is left when the fire has done its work is not emptiness but the concentrated substrate out of which the opus continues. Without the salt no further operation would have anything to work on.

Relationships

• calcinatio
• salt-alchemical
• eros
• sophia-as-arc-from-heraclitus-to-corbin

Primary sources

• edinger-anatomy-of-the-psyche (Edinger 1985)
• jung-mysterium-coniunctionis (Jung 1955)